Marketing tools and education now available free to woman, minority, and veteran-owned businesses via The Orbiter Project

November 13, 2018

PARKER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 13, 2018--With a mission of helping entrepreneurs succeed in business, The Orbiter Project launches today. Now entrepreneurs in need and nonprofits will receive digital marketing education, tools, and community resources free of charge.

“We succeeded in creating a great software product at our previous company, ORBTR. But many of our customers were looking at marketing automation software as a plug-and-play solution to their problems and that was never the intention,” said Erik Wolf, former ORBTR CEO and now serving on the Board of Directors for The Orbiter Project.

The new 501c3 nonprofit organization is the next evolution of the marketing software company ORBTR, entirely restructured within The Orbiter Project’s nonprofit model. As a nonprofit, The Orbiter Project will provide marketing automation software without risk to woman/minority/veteran-owned businesses, nonprofits, unfunded startups, and at-risk businesses.

“If you’re trying to bake a cake, owning a terrific mixer is obviously helpful,” Wolf says, “but you also need a strategy for the entire cake-making process: you have to know what ingredients you need, and how and when to use them. Software doesn’t make great marketers any more than expensive mixers make great bakers.”

The centerpiece of The Orbiter Project’s education offering is the Digital Marketing Academy, a certification course which establishes a six-part framework detailing everything that goes into a working strategy from analytics to search engine optimization to social media, the business purpose for each element, and when a business owner should deploy each element. The Academy will be available both as a virtual class and in-person in the Denver area.

“It’s not our intention that small businesses will suddenly stop hiring agencies, consultants, and developers altogether,” according to Greg Bond, formerly an ORBTR Integrator and now an Orbiter Project Board Member, “but rather that entrepreneurs will enter the process with a blueprint for success, a clear idea of what they are looking for, what they want to achieve and what the pathway to success looks like whether their intention is to manage their own marketing, outsource, or a combination.”

Entrepreneurs can apply for Orbiter Project services at https://orbiterproject.org/get-help/ and accepted applicants will be granted two years of free access to Orbiter Connect software (formerly ORBTR), all education and classes, and the digital community.

Subscriptions to the Orbiter Connect marketing software are also available for sale to all business owners on The Orbiter Project website. “We consider ourselves more than a software company,” says Michael Shihinski, an Orbiter Project Board Member and developer, “and we also know customers still want to purchase our tools, so we didn’t want to change that. Our hope is that business owners embrace our bigger message as well. We think that people will feel good about spending with a charitable organization that will use those funds to strengthen the small business community.”

ABOUT THE ORBITER PROJECT

The Orbiter Project is a 501c3 charitable nonprofit whose mission is to bring the American dream closer to reality for nonprofits, disadvantaged entrepreneurs, and at-risk businesses by providing digital marketing education, tools, and community free of charge. Based in Parker, Colorado, The Orbiter Project also makes and sells Orbiter Connect, a suite of small business marketing software.